


I just need to know (that you won't forget about me)

by roses_and_thorns3



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Angst, Clace if you squint, Clary is a sad smol who deserves better, Isabelle is concerned for her soul sister, It's been a year since Jocelyn died, not a romance-focused fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-07-30
Packaged: 2018-12-09 01:40:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11658954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roses_and_thorns3/pseuds/roses_and_thorns3
Summary: Clary Fairchild didn’t know exactly when loss had become an everyday occurrence in her life.





	I just need to know (that you won't forget about me)

Jace Herondale frowned at the pile of paperwork on his desk. He didn’t know how Alec had handled being Institute Head so efficiently. Jace was _drowning_. His fingers ached from signing so many damned papers.

He had just sat down to begin cracking down on the source of his headaches for the next hour when Isabelle Lightwood tapped a manicured fingernail against the doorframe. He turned to smile at his sister, and found concern in her eyes. His smile faded.

“What’s up, Iz?”

“Have you seen Clary?”

 

He hadn’t, not since she’d gone out last night. His girlfriend had seemed to be less and less present as the week had gone on. She claimed to just be spending quality time with Luke, but he had already deduced there was more to the situation. The Clave’s paperwork had kept him from examining her mood any further. Perhaps he was being a bad boyfriend. Apprehension furrowed his eyebrows at the thought.

“Not since last night, why?”

Izzy clearly did not like this answer. It looked like disappointment in her eyes.

“You don’t know what day it is, do you?”

 

Jace had the sense he was making a colossal mistake as a boyfriend. Isabelle’s disapproving expression seemed to agree with this.

~

Clary Fairchild didn’t know exactly when loss had become an everyday occurrence in her life. She supposed it began the night of her birthday almost a year and a half ago, when everything she knew was dashed by the violent truth. Or perhaps it had begun after her best friend Simon Lewis had died and become a vampire. Things had gotten increasingly worse after that, surely. Or maybe it had begun immediately after discovering Valentine Morgenstern, infamous leader of the Circle and the Downworld’s own Adolf Hitler, was her father.

 

Maybe it had begun on this day one year ago. The day a person she would have called an ally shoved his fist through her mother.

The day her mother died.

 

Clary was in the City of Bones, staring at the words etched into her mother’s headstone. JOCELYN FAIRCHILD, LOVING MOTHER. Clary was surprised the Clave had even allowed her to be buried here, after having forsaken her life as a Shadowhunter years before. The Clave had nothing to say about her mother as a person, so Clary had told the Silent Brothers what to write on her grave. She hated the words written into the stone. Hated the fact that they needed to be there. Loving mother. Indeed she had been. There shouldn’t _need_ to be a past tense. Her mama should be with her _now._  Despite her conscious mind’s effort to ignore the memory, she felt it as she was taken back to the night she’d spent alone before the funeral.

~

_Clary walked back from Iris Rouse’s office in a daze, Jace, Alec, and Isabelle close behind her. She was both glad for and unwanting of their presence. She was teetering on the knife’s edge, far too close to tears. And if she cried, she knew there wouldn’t be any stopping. She’d been playing this game for two days now. From the moment she found her mom with a gaping hole through her chest, to the moment she realized she was never coming back._

 

_Clary remembered how relief had exploded in her chest the moment Magnus woke Jocelyn from her coma. The moment her mother’s eyes fell on Clary’s face for the first time in weeks. Suddenly everything was alright. She had found her, she had found her. Everything would be okay now._

_What a pitiful lie, Clary thought._

 

_She didn’t remember opening the Institute doors. Didn’t remember crossing the hallway to the cloister, where all the dead were being kept until Rite of Mourning. All she could see was the stone slab they had laid her mother out on. The white cloth draped over her body. The reminder that Clary would never find warmth in her mother’s arms ever again._

_She could not do this._

_Without a sound, Clary slumped against the slab her mother now slumbered on._

 

_When the tears came, they did not come easily. Her sobs were choked and broken, her heart a cold, dead thing in her chest as she shattered. Her mother was dead. Her mother was dead. She couldn’t stand to think of anything else._

_Clary buried her face in her hands, shoving the heels of her palms into her eyes in a pathetic attempt to staunch the tears._

_“Please don’t leave me, Mama.”_

 

_Clary did not look up again for the rest of the night._

 

_She did not notice Alec Lightwood watching her from the doorway. Did not see that he was crying too._

~

She shouldn’t have died. Even after a year, Clary still thought it. It hadn’t been her time to die. Perhaps that was why Clary had felt nothing when Valentine died. He _deserved_ it. He killed her mother. His own wife. He killed her grandparents. His wife’s parents. Ruined Jonathan. His wife’s son. Her brother. He deserved nothing but death.

 

But hating him didn’t make the tombstone in front of her any less true.

 

She sat by herself for the rest of the day. Silently missing her mother’s embrace.

**Author's Note:**

> I just felt like writing angst. *shrugs* Hope it made you sad. If not, I failed in my job. Yell at me on Twitter at @sassyarcherboy.


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